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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Judith Jarvis Thomson

The philosophy of The Good Place

01 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in African Thought, Analytic Tradition, Christianity, Metaphilosophy, Morality, Practice, Virtue

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Christian Hendriks, hell, Jonathan Dancy, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Michael Schur, Pierre Hadot, T.M. Scanlon, television, trolley problem, United States, Uzodinma Nwala

the good placeThe Good Place, an American comedy-fantasy series created by Michael Schur and airing on NBC, is perhaps the most explicitly philosophical American television show in recent memory. I think it aims to do for moral philosophy what Breaking Bad did for chemistry. (This post speaks of the second season, but does not have spoilers – at least in the sense that it does not reveal any of the show’s twists.) Continue reading →

The problem with the trolley

27 Sunday Feb 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Metaphilosophy, Morality, Prejudices and "Intuitions", Virtue

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Harvard University, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Michael Sandel, pedagogy, Philippa Foot, Thomas Aquinas, trolley problem, virtue ethics

Suppose a trolley is hurtling down a track, on which are placed five innocent people with no chance to escape in time. You are standing beside a switch that will redirect the trolley onto a track where stands one innocent person, who also has no chance to escape. Should you flip the switch, and thereby kill one to save five?

Now suppose there is no track onto which the trolley can be redirected; the five innocents will be in its path no matter what happens. Instead of being beside a switch, you are standing on a bridge over the tracks, beside a very fat man looking down over the action. You can push the man over the bridge, knowing his enormous girth will stop the trolley’s movement before it hits the innocents. Should you push the man, and thereby kill one to save five?

Michael Sandel begins his famous course on Justice with this action scene, and it’s a great way to start such a course. This trolley problem, ingeniously introduced by Judith Jarvis Thomson and the late Philippa Foot, is a wonderful way to shock beginning students out of their ethical complacency. For nearly all people faced with this problem agree they would kill one to save five in the first situation but not the second. After hearing one case they think there’s an easy principle by which to decide the right action; after hearing the second, they are forced to admit that there isn’t. Continue reading →

The singular achievement of the 20th century

11 Sunday Oct 2009

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Family, Islam, Politics, Roman Catholicism

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

20th century, Ayn Rand, Christine Korsgaard, gender, Iris Murdoch, John Paul II, Judith Butler, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Martha Nussbaum, Philippa Foot

Pope John Paul II once declared the 20th century to be the most evil of all centuries, and it’s not hard to come up with evidence for such a claim even if one doesn’t share his presuppositions. The Holocaust, other genocides from Armenia to Rwanda, Stalinism, Pol Pot, the threat of humankind’s voluntary self-extinction by nuclear annihilation and then of involuntary self-extinction by environmental catastrophe – the human beings of the 20th century have a lot to answer for.

I sometimes imagine the centuries lined up on some chronological Judgement Day, and the 20th century being shown its great catalogue of horrors and atrocities. A cosmic judge asks that century “What do you have to say for yourself? How can you possibly justify your existence in the face of this destruction?”

In spite of everything, before this cosmic temporal court, I believe the 20th century could make up for it all with three small words: Continue reading →

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